Mizzou’s Plan To Rent Out Dorm Rooms For Football Games Is Genius For All The Wrong Reasons

I’ll be honest: I’m split on this one. Part of me wants to make fun of Mizzou for renting out dorm rooms and getting further and further away from the SEC light. Another part of me, the business part, thinks about how much this increased competition is going to drop the price of Columbia, MO hotel rooms and Uber rides for when I come back for homecoming and get too white girl wasted at My House.

A new plan to raise money at Mizzou has set its sights on renting out dorm rooms at the school for football games. MU currently has seven — yes, seven — residence halls that aren’t being used. Blame it on the protests, blame it on the drop of graduating high school seniors… I don’t care. The fact is there’s about $5 million worth of sunken costs when these dorms are just sitting around.

Dropping enrollment means only about 4,000 incoming freshmen are expected to enroll in August, down from 6,419 in the fall of 2015. The university has closed seven residence halls with 1,461 beds.

During the UM Board of Curators meeting Thursday, MU Vice Chancellor for Operations Gary Ward said a website is available for people to reserve two-bedroom, four-bed suites for $120 a night. Parking is extra.

The university has other ideas for using the dorms, including guest housing during conferences and the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse and opening earlier in August so students can move in before the school year starts. The cost of keeping an idle building includes utilities and maintenance personnel for landscaping and other needs.

Overnight guests will pay taxes on their rooms although whether it will be equal to current room taxes was unclear. Ward said he doesn’t expect area hotels to complain about competition.

I’d just like to say I’m all for fraternity houses going full Airbnb style on gameday weekends. Why wouldn’t I want to rent a room featuring “gently used sheets that were washed last month, Congress vodka-soaked carpet, a gorgeous window view of the GPhi house, a never ending supply of dong bags, and, most importantly, two (2) Xboxs.” That shit would sell out in the matter of seconds.

This dorm rental program? Not so sure. I mean, if you play your cards right at the bar then you’re going to be going back to her dorm room faster than you can think about how that freshman gal even got into the bar in the first place. Sleeping in the dorms for any other reason just kinda weirds me out. Are there going to be RAs? Floor meetings? Don’t answer those questions; I don’t want to think about this concept anymore.

If you’re going to travel to CoMo for a weekend football game, be a man and show off your big swinging peen by buying a hotel room. Just thank Mizzou for making them all 10x cheaper so more money can be spent on bottle service. Gracias, mi amigos..